this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
400 points (95.0% liked)

Technology

69804 readers
5302 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Any Chromium and Firefox browser prior to version 116 will be vulnerable to this, update your browsers.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 119 points 2 years ago (2 children)

This is way way wider than just browsers. Anything that can display webp images is vulnerable and that includes things like MS Teams and Twitch.

[–] [email protected] 65 points 2 years ago (6 children)

Further solidifying webp as the worst image format.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

The current advisory is in webm (VP8 specifically). The webp one was 2 weeks ago. ...yeah, not a good time for web browsers lately...

(edit: noticed OP actually did link the webp one, I thought it'd be CVE-2023-5217 because that's being linked elsewhere)

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

WebP is currently the smallest and highest quality format accepted by browsers today. I have no idea why you think so negatively of it, but it's irreplaceable until something better is widely adopted, and thus viable.

It's the best format for websites as of this exact moment.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago

Highest compression, not highest quality (arguably).

Also heavy compression which takes more resources to display.

Also poor compatibility outside browsers.

afaik it's basically still just VP8 in image format with added metadata, and google refuses to support alternatives because they like to own the browser market.

I think there was gonna be a webp and webm 2, but it never happened.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

The only reason that’s the case is because Google axed the JPEGXL implementation

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

AVIF is supported everywhere and it's fantastic

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 years ago (7 children)

There's some politics involved. Basically, everyone is rallying behind JPEGXL instead of WebP, but Google refuses to support JPEGXL in Chrome. The reasoning they gave is weak, so it's assumed that they're just trying to force the format they invented on everyone because they can.

IIRC, performance of the two formats is similar.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago
load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (3 children)

It’s a format that most major image editors don’t support. Basically, if you wanted to do anything with it, you need to first convert it to a different format. It’s the only format that has this problem.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That's fair except it's not the only format that has this problem. There's JPEG 2000 and AVIF which have even less image editor support.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 63 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Well, i think firefox 117 fixed that webp issue so i am on that one.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Specifically 117.0.1 (117.1 on android)

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Good to go. Always roll with the latest version. 118.0.1

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago (5 children)
load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Yep. Fennec F-Droid 117.1.0

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 56 points 2 years ago

idk. The post content was not in all caps, so I am not really sure about the urgency

[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 years ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

It's last week's big libwebp vulnerability again.

Edit: this underlying vuln is why last week's CVE was such a big deal, anything using webp is at risk including a whole big pile of electron apps that everyone uses.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago

Sorta. OP just linked the full disclosure of the libwebp vulnerability that made the news 2 weeks ago.

But there's an even more recent vulnerability in libvpx that was announced this week, that is similar in a lot of ways (including severity).

[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 years ago

There's a more recent CVE as well for FF that was patched in 118.0.1: CVE-2023-5217: Heap buffer overflow in libvpx

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 years ago (4 children)

What actual like platforms does this affect and to what extent tho? Like Mac (probably not iOS which is WebKit)?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 years ago (7 children)

I've read elsewhere it's actually a problem with libwebp not just chrome.
Basically, anything that relies on libwebp (ie can play libwebp) is vulnerable.
https://snyk.io/blog/critical-webp-0-day-cve-2023-4863/

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Current Description

Heap buffer overflow in libwebp in Google Chrome prior to 116.0.5845.187 and libwebp 1.3.2 allowed a remote attacker to perform an out of bounds memory write via a crafted HTML page. (Chromium security severity: Critical)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

By crafter webpage, does it mean it refers to anything like phishing or something a more savvy user wouldn't likely "fall for" or does that actually not matter (zero-day or whatever)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Looks like it can do RCE without user interaction other than visiting the page-- not good!

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago

Discord, slack, MS Teams, Steam, pretty much anything. But most of them have already fixed it so if you let stuff update itself frequently, there's little risk.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I read this as RICE vulnerability and was confused

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah, Linux boys would be mad

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

No, how could I be mad about the truth? We'd download and run any dotfiles if the screenshot looks nice enough.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 years ago (2 children)

What about webview-based browsers in android phones?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (2 children)

As far as I'm aware this does affect Android and is not currently fixed. It's expected to be fixed in the October security patch.

This is just my memory of reading weeks ago. Someone else may know better.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The Android webview is updated through the play store as of a few years ago

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

I believe the libwebp is implemented at the OS level. Again someone else may know better.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

This isn't just a browser vulnerability. It's a vulnerability at a much more fundamental level, which is why it's so critical. It's a vulnerability in how almost every piece of software processes a widely supported image format, so anything that touches images is potentially at risk: browsers, chat or messaging apps, file browsers, or really anything that uses thumbnails or image previews, including some core OS functionality. On the server side, you've got anything that makes thumbnails and previews, too.

We should wait and see whether there are any practical attacks outside the browser context (maybe the malicious code needs to be placed in a web page that displays the malicious image file, or maybe they need to figure out a way to actually put all the malicious code in the image file itself). But the vulnerability itself is in a fundamental library used by a lot more software.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Not sure why you only mention Chromium and Firefox in the post text, I can only assume this vulnerability affects ALL browsers. Safari (WebKit based) is, as far as I know, the second most used browser in the world.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's anything implementing .webp support. Though the CVE has been out for nearly two weeks already so most apps have been patched.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›